Thoughts on the military and military activities of a diverse nature. Free-ranging and eclectic.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Ussuri.

This is coolbert:

This too from the EnglishRussia web site. Events as transpired from over forty years ago now, NOT forgotten but a distant memory. At that time only covered in brief with little detail and since that time almost a black hole only snippets emerging as to what transpired. Soviet and Chinese military forces in confrontation along the border between the two communist nations, an island in the middle of the Ussuri river disputed territory the sovereignty and dominion of which was a point of contention.

WHO owns this or that spit of land historically and traditionally a flash point, the proverbial push coming to shove and ultimately WAR!

The dispute over the ownership of the island [Damansky to the Soviet and Zhenbao to the Chinese] finally resulting in mortal armed combat, the Soviet KGB Border Guards [NOT Red army this should be clear] seeming to get the worse of the situation! ARMED CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TWO FOREMOST COMMUNIST POWERS OF THE PERIOD UNPRECEDENTED AND MOST WORRISOME!

"On March 2, 1969, a group of Chinese troops ambushed Soviet border guards on Zhenbao Island. The Soviets suffered 59 dead, including a senior colonel, and 94 wounded."

"The Sino-Soviet border conflict . . . was a seven-month military conflict between the Soviet Union and China at the height of the Sino-Soviet split in 1969. The most serious of these border clashes occurred in March 1969 in the vicinity of Zhenbao Island . . . on the Ussuri River, also known as Damanskii Island . . . in Russia. Chinese historians most commonly refer to the conflict by the Zhenbao Island incident . . . The conflict was finally resolved with future border demarcations."

It appears the Chinese on the right of the image are waving the Little Red Book of Mao, repeatedly haranguing the Soviet KGB Border Guards with exhortations from the Chairman!! Chinese PLA personnel were BETTER dressed for the occasion, that extreme cold weather not so bothersome to them?

Soviet KGB Border Guard troops equipped with nothing more than forked sticks. Moscow having given explicit directions that Soviet personnel not allowed to actually lay hands on the Chinese during confrontations, but rather use limited force, the sticks used to PUSH the Chinese interloper out of the disputed territory this being called "contactless displacement"!! During the Middle Ages men-a-foot may have used similar sticks when in battle with armed horsemen, attempting to dismount and unhorse the rider! I have seen film footage of Russian biologists subduing the Siberian tiger in the wild using the same forked sticks!! Strange but true!

Such was the seriousness of the situation as perceived in Moscow that TOP SECRET weaponry was brought to the scene, to include the T-62 tank, the BM-21 multiple rocket launcher and the AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher. That highest command echelon in Moscow at the pinnacle of power was most concerned with the Chinese threat as seen at the time.

And from 1969 onward almost a total news blackout has existed that confrontation over Damansky/Zhenbao island in a purposeful manner kept low-key and with good reason? At least until now?